Meditation: Headspace, Energizing 20 Length: 5 minutes (for the meditation, 20 minutes total) Where: Office/Guest Room(/Gym!), Los Angeles How It Felt: Innnnnnteresting
Today was the third day in a row I woke up to an alarm, and I am feeling it.
Now, a lot of you are probably thinking, “I wake up to an alarm all the time! I’m always tired! So what?”
If so, I get it. That’s the pace of life, and in normal times, this wouldn’t be unusual. My schedule is often all over the place and I spent a lot of time pushing through being tired, too.
BUT- well, two buts- one, it’s not normal times. It’s the end(ish) of a global pandemic, and I frankly haven’t had to do much of anything on a schedule for a year. I volunteered, I did readings and directed plays, I read a ton of books and went on long, rambling walks, ok sure. But very rarely did I have to set an alarm and wake up earlier than I wanted to wake up. I’m a big baby now!
The second “but” is that I’ve also very intentionally built a life with a slower pace and plenty of sleep time built in. (And I’ve been incredibly lucky and privileged to do so. This has not always been my situation, not even close, but it’s something that’s become important to me in the past few years.)
This might honestly be the first time I’ve had to set an alarm three days in a row since early 2020! Crazy! I also gave blood, which I think leaves me a bit sluggish.
So, while I did wake up to that alarm and powered through the first part of today, I hit a wall pretty quickly and have been hella sluggish for the rest of it.
One thing I didn’t feel was anxious! So, once again I took a day off of the anxiety meditation course I’ve been doing on the Calm app, and decided to search Headspace for anything that might bring me a little energy to power through the rest of my to do list.
I pretty quickly found a video called “Energizing 20” which, I believe, is part of Headspace’s new “Move” tab. I’ve never done one of these before, but the description promised a five minute meditation at the end of a little fifteen minute workout, so I figured it was worth a shot. I hadn’t worked out today yet, either, so two birds with one stone and all that.
(That’s a terrible phrase. What sociopath goes around hitting birds with stones? Let alone doubling up on it! What a dick.)
One issue- the app is on my phone and the screen is so small! The workout portion turned out to be yoga, so I had to lie on the mat and try to hear and see everything going on from all different angles. It was impossible. I thought maybe, since they now have workout videos, Headspace might have an app for the TV. I searched for it using our Fire Stick and was first excited to see a screen pop up with the Headspace logo and different meditations. Perfect!
It wasn’t though. It was pretty clunky, but eventually I figured out that there are only five options offered, and none of them are workouts. Still, something cool to remember for the future! Apparently you can just say “Alexa, ask Headspace for today’s meditation” and the daily 10 minute session will come up. I saw some sleep options, too, as well as the option to continue the last course I was working through… which is weird because I don’t know how my Headspace is connected to Amazon, come to think of it…
But, honestly, Alexa has already taken over my entire life so I may as well just lean in at this point.
Anyway, no “Move” videos. So, I was back to my phone screen. It wouldn’t have been too bad, except that it was easily one of the twisty-est fifteen minutes of yoga I’ve done in a long time, and I kept having to pause to move my phone around, or twist my body back around to see what was going on. And she moved fast.
Why would the people filming this video (which was beautifully shot, for the record) not take into consideration that the people watching would almost definitely be watching on their phones? So many angles and turn arounds and flips!
The movement wasn’t too challenging, and it did wake me up a bit, I have to say. I found the energy after to power through dishes, some clean up, some email, and now writing this blog, which I couldn’t have even imagined attempting a few hours ago.
The meditation was very quick and involved a bit of movement and a lot of voice guidance. Next time, I will maybe hold out for a more dedicated meditation, but I would definitely try these Move videos again for quick energy in the future! And I’m thrilled I figured out an easy way to access Headspace from a new source.
Overall, successful experiment! Now, to collapse.
My Year of Meditation 